The blog of fantasy author Shanna Swendson. Read about my adventures in publishing and occasionally life.

Friday, March 17, 2017

Scary Things

I’ve reached a point at which my characters are blowing my plans out of the water — or else are revealing that my plans weren’t very good in the first place. I’m going to have to do some thinking and figure out exactly who knows what and who has what so I can decide where to go from here.

I think that means that I should walk up the hill to the movie theater and see Beauty and the Beast today. The walk will give me time to think and meditate on the subject, and I’ve often found that ideas pop into my head while I’m watching other things.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I have a new logo, and now I need a new web site, but I think I may update and change the current one to match the new logo for the time being before the next book comes out.

In the meantime, I also need to come up with something to do with the ton of blueberries I just bought because they were ridiculously cheap. I’m ashamed to confess that I already have blueberry muffins in the freezer, and I just found another packet of blueberries from last year in the freezer. I’m a bad freezer hoarder. I may make a pie this weekend. Maybe some jam? I wonder how Irish soda bread would do with blueberries instead of raisins. Or blueberry scones?

You know that scene in the original Willie Wonka movie where the girl turns into a giant blueberry? That could be me very soon. Incidentally, that’s also the only movie moment I can recall that was so traumatic that I had to be taken out of the theater. I was a preschooler during the original run (yes, I’m old), and I freaked out so badly in that scene that my parents had to take me out of the movie. I didn’t see the entire movie until I was an adult. Now I’m not sure why that bothered me so much. My friend at that age was scared by the Monstro the whale part of Pinocchio, but I was more or less okay with it in the movie, possibly because I’d listened to the story and songs record so many times (though I did make a practice of hiding under the bed during that part). But, yeah, a girl turning into a blueberry was too much for me to take. Mind you, I was maybe 3 or 4 at the time, and human logic doesn’t necessarily apply.